Phones, caffeine, and ham (oh the ham!): a MWC 2013 photo tour

If you couldn't make it to Mobile World Congress, this is the next best thing.

You'd think that CES would be about as much trade show as anyone could stomach in one fiscal quarter, but I am apparently a glutton for punishment—I've spent the last few days in Barcelona, Spain with Microsoft Editor Peter Bright covering this year's Mobile World Congress.

This is my first year hitting most of these events, but here is my synopsis for those not familiar: MWC is not unlike CES, but it's a slightly smaller and more focused show that gives the stage to smartphone hardware and software makers, carriers, and the legions of developers and accessory makers that have sprung up around this industry.

As is common at shows of this size, it's hard to hit absolutely everything, but we've tried to separate the wheat from the chaff—you can check out all of our coverage on this handy landing page. To give you some idea of what it's actually like to be on the show floor (and in a strange new city) for this particular trade show, the photos below have been assembled for your perusal. And if you'll excuse me, I need to deal with the symptoms of ham withdrawal.

After landing in the Barcelona airport, you can scarcely go anywhere within a few miles (sorry, kilometers) of the convention center without seeing signage for MWC somewhere.

While getting from place to place in Las Vegas for CES usually involves a frustrating amount of waiting in line for $20 cab rides, Barcelona has an excellent mass transit system and the GSMA (the event's organizers) gives attendees a four-day pass for it when they pick up their badges. Not only does it make transport less of a pain, it also encourages a bit more exploration of the city itself.

Andrew Cunningham

This year, the show moved to the Fira Gran Via convention center. Unlike the sprawling (and increasingly scattered) CES, most of MWC actually fits within the walls of this building.

Andrew Cunningham

Booths in the convention center's eight halls ranged from the tiny to the enormous—Samsung's booth was one of the larger ones, and there were dozens of tablets and phones arranged on tables (usually attached to hulking anti-theft devices).

Andrew Cunningham

LG's booth was smaller, but no less white, shiny, or phone-filled.

Andrew Cunningham

Nokia's booth was, predictably, very Windows Phone-centric. It was also the convention's most reliable source of free Diet Coke, (known in Europe as Coke Light) an addictive substance that some Ars writers can convert into words.

Andrew Cunningham

Our own Peter Bright, standing next to a display for ZTE's 5.7-inch Grand Memo.

Andrew Cunningham

Peter got a chance to take a look at Nokia's new Windows phones: the mid-tier Lumia 720, and the low-end Lumia 520.

Nvidia was using a few reference devices to show off its Tegra 4 and Tegra 4i SoCs. Here, the guts of a phone have been spread out onto a large board and then connected to a power meter to show off Tegra 4i's power consumption.

Andrew Cunningham

The GSMA took every opportunity to encourage people to use the NFC chips in their phones—a move which, according to some, is not very fetch.

Did you know that if you sit a journalist in front of a keyboard for an infinite amount of time, they'll eventually type some classic literature? Or maybe they'll just write about phones—we're not sure how the theorem applies.

Andrew Cunningham

Google didn't have much of a presence at the show this year, but Android (and Androids like this one at Intel's booth) was still all over the place.

Andrew Cunningham

We had a good time soaking Sony's Xperia Z and Xperia Tablet Z in water, but we doubt Sony would have been so keen on doing it for us if water-resistance wasn't one of the devices' features.

Andrew Cunningham

I'm always on a quest for bigger phones. I tried Lenovo's 5.5-inch K900, but it just wasn't big enough!

Peter Bright

I moved on up to ZTE's 5.7-inch Grand Memo, but it still just wasn't big enough for my needs.

Peter Bright

Samsung's 8-inch Galaxy Note 8.0 came to the rescue though—it can make phone calls, and thus satisfied my huge phone wanderlust… for now.

Peter Bright

Night falls on the Fira Gran Via, and it's time to go back home.

Andrew Cunningham

No trip to Spain is complete without dinner at a tapas place, and no dinner at a tapas place is complete without Iberian ham. We'll end our photo tour of MWC the same way we ended our trip to Barcelona—with a big pile of cured meat.

Andrew Cunningham

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham

Promoted Comments

Also, I like the photo of the journalist sweatshop, where the tables have little dividers between stations to delineate boundaries. I can imagine the slap-fights that might erupt were those not in place.

22 Reader Comments

What does the person that says so eat? You know that crude spanish ham is one of the best in the world, many types, for example serrano (cheaper and good) and iberico (pata negra). It is also good for your health, good taste.

Jamón ibérico is one of the best things that any person can ever put in their mouth. I haven't had any since I went to Jaleo in Vegas a couple years back, and I miss it tremendously. You should have bought some to bring home.

Also, I like the photo of the journalist sweatshop, where the tables have little dividers between stations to delineate boundaries. I can imagine the slap-fights that might erupt were those not in place.

Jamón ibérico is one of the best things that any person can ever put in their mouth. I haven't had any since I went to Jaleo in Vegas a couple years back, and I miss it tremendously. You should have bought some to bring home.

Wait - is the article about Ham World Congress, or am I reading the headline wrong?

I would go out-of-pocket to send the whole staff to Ham World Congress.

Serrano ham is amazing but it's just one of many awesome dishes/foods/tapas they make. I spent three years working in Spain (Barcelona and Madrid) and I sorely miss their food. Every meal was a fiesta for the mouth.

Everybody speaks highly of Italian food, which is absolutely wonderful, but Spanish food is on par and in some cases better. Why haven't Spanish restaurants invaded every corner of every city the way Chinese and to some extent Italian restaurants have done?

If Spaniards got their act together and became the world's kitchen they would beat Germany's economy hands down. They would be the ones forcing austerity down the Germans' throats!

I would go on and on but all that talk made me hungry. Now, where did I put those delicious olives.....

Pro tip (until I add a note about it somewhere): left and right arrow keys on your keyboard should now navigate the slides.

Someone has likely already mentioned this in a past photo collage, but it's driving me nuts enough now to finally say something myself: I really dislike how I always have to scroll up and down upon viewing every photo just to be able to read the caption, since it's otherwise off-screen when I have the full photo on-screen. Maybe consider shrinking down the size of the box containing the photos? I know it's impossible to please everyone on every device, but I'm using a 1050 pixel height desktop monitor, which, while slightly underwhelming, is not exactly tiny. Thanks!

But that's not true. I mean, it's quite alright compared to many other cities, but you should check out Madrid's metro if you want to see an actually good metro system... Barcelona's metro is badly designed and it takes forever to go anywhere that needs one line change, nevermind 2 or more... Passeig De Gràcia, I'm looking at you...

About the new venue: quite an improvement over the original, but it's in the middle of one of the crappiest neighbourhoods of the metropolitan area, despite the (failed) gentrification attempts. The not-yet-finished-and-currently-frozen-due-to-lack-of-funds L9 metro line should have been ready for such an event, but it's still years away and the even crappier FGC commuter train lines had to be used to get to the venue. Surprisingly, parking spots weren't so difficult to find around the north/back entrance (hall 8), and you could avoid the Gran Via traffic mess by driving around the Montjuïc area, which was actually filled with signs pointing to the venue and completely devoid of traffic.

The press guys had their own lunch area, but mere mortals like I had to stand in line for at least 20 minutes just to get a sandwich. Then on wednesday I wised up and went to the Gran Via 2 mall for lunch, which I should have done since Monday. Also, the lack of vending machines was disturbing (I eventually found a few in some halls but found none in the hallways; I felt guilty after drinking so much coffe and drinks for free at the Mozilla/Firefox booth...)

Pro tip (until I add a note about it somewhere): left and right arrow keys on your keyboard should now navigate the slides.

Someone has likely already mentioned this in a past photo collage, but it's driving me nuts enough now to finally say something myself: I really dislike how I always have to scroll up and down upon viewing every photo just to be able to read the caption, since it's otherwise off-screen when I have the full photo on-screen. Maybe consider shrinking down the size of the box containing the photos? I know it's impossible to please everyone on every device, but I'm using a 1050 pixel height desktop monitor, which, while slightly underwhelming, is not exactly tiny. Thanks!

I think that is a fair critique. We are trying to brainstorm up solutions. Possibly auto-sizing the gallery to fit the vertical height of the browser window. So far we haven't found the perfect solution.

Looking at the picture of someone using the 8-inch Galaxy Note as a phone - seems like a "using a hammer to saw a board" scenario. Hook a Bluetooth Mic upto it and stop looking stupid. We do not need society regressing to the days of the Motorola Brick Phone.

I so want to get one of those old Motorola brick phones and embed a small candy-bar phone inside, just to be able to use current networks. And then nonchalantly pull it out of a briefcase when it rings and tell the other party to fax me the details...

Wait - is the article about Ham World Congress, or am I reading the headline wrong?

I would go out-of-pocket to send the whole staff to Ham World Congress.

Serrano ham is amazing but it's just one of many awesome dishes/foods/tapas they make. I spent three years working in Spain (Barcelona and Madrid) and I sorely miss their food. Every meal was a fiesta for the mouth.

Everybody speaks highly of Italian food, which is absolutely wonderful, but Spanish food is on par and in some cases better. Why haven't Spanish restaurants invaded every corner of every city the way Chinese and to some extent Italian restaurants have done?

If Spaniards got their act together and became the world's kitchen they would beat Germany's economy hands down. They would be the ones forcing austerity down the Germans' throats!

I would go on and on but all that talk made me hungry. Now, where did I put those delicious olives.....

Actually, we kind of prefer to stay home and ask foreigners to come here and taste our food. Check this out: http://www.theworlds50best.com/past-win ... d-winners/ (3 of the 10 best restaurants past year were Spanish, and you must take into account the best chef in the world for many years, Ferrán Adría, just closed his restaurant -El Bulli- indefinitely, to devote himself to research...).

Why in the world don't tablets come with bluetooth headsets, that fit nicely in a slot cut in the side? Unlike phones, they've got plenty of room for it (I'd like one on my phone, too, to hell with the extra space!).